On this day in 1688 Alexander Pope was born in London, the only child of middle-aged, Catholic parents. This was the year of the Glorious Revolution, and the broom that swept out Catholic James II and swept in Constitutional reform also brought new restrictions and suspicions upon English Catholics. Barred from politics, and from attending university in pursuit of such careers as law and medicine -- barred even from living within ten miles of London -- Pope began as an outsider and seemed destined to remain so. In his early teens he contracted a tubercular bone disease which caused him to be hunchbacked, no more than 4' 6" tall, and plagued by various secondary ailments ... FULL STORY »
